"Double Standard" Update

Jesuit Magazine Publishes Pro-Abort’s Attack on Archbishop Burke

by Christopher A. Ferrara

        On August 9, 2004 CAN news service reported that "the Jesuit magazine, America, will publish an article in its Aug. 16-23 issue, in which a pro-abortion politician says he will not let Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis ‘coerce’ him into imposing the Church’s teachings on U.S. society."

        In the article, entitled "My Conscience, My Vote", U.S. Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.) whines that Archbishop Burke "attempted to use his interpretations of theology to coerce me into taking specific positions on matters that I believe are matters of constitutional law." Interpretations of theology? Obey means, obviously, the teaching of the Catholic Church on the necessity of denying Holy Communion to obstinate sinners who are complicit in the mass murder of children in the womb.

        Obey is now hiding behind the cover that the craven majority of U.S. bishops have provided him. He cites the bishops’ recent statement leaving the denial of Holy Communion to notorious pro-abort politicians up to each bishop. Obey says that while he personally "detests" abortion and agrees with Catholic teaching condemning it, he will not "force my views into laws that, if adopted, would be unenforceable and would tear this society apart." In other words, he will not allow God’s law to interfere with human law. He is personally opposed to child-murder, but will do nothing to stop it.

        This, of course, is the position of a morally bankrupt coward. It is the position of Pontius Pilate, who knew the crowd wished to send an innocent to His death, but did not want to risk turning the mob against himself.

        A Cardinal of the Vatican apparatus (Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos) has demanded that Fr. Nicholas Gruner "retract" certain articles in Fatima Crusader magazines because they are critical of certain eminently fallible Vatican policies (Ostpolitik and "ecumenism") which in no way involve the Church’s binding teaching on faith and morals. But will the Vatican demand a retraction of the article in America, in which the Jesuit order (or what is left of it) airs a public attack on the sound moral teaching of Archbishop Burke, who is defending the Blessed Sacrament from sacrilege?

        Don’t bet on it. For under the double standard of Church discipline that has arisen since the Second Vatican Council, it is not the Church’s perennial doctrines, but the fallible prudential judgments of certain men in the Vatican apparatus, which are defended with an iron hand. That is why the Church is in crisis.